Page:Village life in Korea (1911).djvu/67

Rh stones till they are spotlessly white. This is a part of the daily life work of hundreds of women in this old city. The constant "whack-et-te-whack" that kept you awake till after midnight last night was nothing but the noise of the ironing sticks as these same women pounded the clothes which they had washed in this stream during the day. It would hardly be expected that such methods would turn out a superior quality of laundry, but I have yet to see anything nicer in this line than some of the finished products of these same women with the ironing sticks.

See, here we are just passing a little Japanese shrine. See there beneath that clump of beautiful pines the little gate and the circular path leading up to the place where rests the image of Buddha. Here even the Japanese stops the study of modern warfare long enough to make his bow to the spirits.

There goes the bell. It is now twelve o'clock. So say the notes of the tongueless old bell that hangs in the tower at the junction of the two great streets near the center of the city. This bell, like all other Korean bells having no tongue, is made to give out its sound by means of a log which is swung by two chains and, being drawn back several feet, is allowed to swing forward and strike the outside of the bell, causing it to give out the doleful sound that has been announcing the noon hour in this sleepy old city since long before the Mayflower dropped anchor off Plymouth Rock. There is an interesting story told concerning the making of this bell. The bell is very large (something like twelve feet high and nearly as wide in diameter), and